The evidence of tools found in caves along the coast of what is now Lebanon shows that the area was inhabited from the Paleolithic Period (Old Stone Age) through the Neolithic Period (New Stone Age). Village life followed the domestication of plants and animals (the Neolithic Revolution, after about 10,000 BCE), with Byblos (modern Jubayl) apparently taking the lead. At this site also appear the first traces in Lebanon of pottery and metallurgy (first copper, then bronze, an alloy of tin and copper) by the 4th millennium BCE. The Phoenicians, indistinguishable from the Canaanites of Palestine, probably arrived in the land that became Phoenicia (a Greek term applied to the coast of Lebanon) about 3000 BCE. Herodotus and other Classical writers preserve a tradition that they came from the coast of the Erythraean Sea (i.e., the Persian Gulf), but in fact nothing certain is known of their original homeland.

Except at Byblos, no excavations have produced any information concerning the 3rd millennium in Phoenicia before the advent of the Phoenicians. At Byblos the first urban settlement is dated about 3050–2850 BCE. Commercial and religious connections with Egypt, probably by sea, are attested from the Egyptian 4th dynasty (c. 2575–c. 2465 BCE). The earliest artistic representations of Phoenicians are found at Memphis, in a damaged relief of Pharaoh Sahure of the 5th dynasty (mid-25th to early 24th century BCE). This shows the arrival of an Asiatic princess to be the pharaoh’s bride; her escort is a fleet of seagoing ships, probably of the type known to the Egyptians as “Byblos ships,” manned by crews of Asiatics, evidently Phoenicians.

Byblos was destroyed by fire about 2150 BCE, probably by the invading Amorites. The Amorites rebuilt on the site, and a period of close contact with Egypt was begun. Costly gifts were given by the pharaohs to those Phoenician and Syrian princes, such as the rulers of Ugarit and Katna, who were loyal to Egypt. Whether this attests to Egypt’s political dominion over Phoenicia at this time or simply to strong diplomatic and commercial relations is not entirely clear.

In the 18th century BCE new invaders, the Hyksos, destroyed Amorite rule in Byblos and, passing on to Egypt, brought the Middle Kingdom to an end (c. 1630 BCE). Little is known about the Hyksos’ origin, but they seem to have been ethnically mixed, including a considerable Semitic element, since the Phoenician deities El, Baal, and Anath figured in their pantheon. The rule of the Hyksos in Egypt was brief and their cultural achievement slight, but in this period the links with Phoenicia and Syria were strengthened by the presence of Hyksos aristocracies throughout the region. Pharaoh Ahmose I expelled the Hyksos about 1539 BCE and instituted the New Kingdom policy of conquest in Palestine and Syria. In his annals, Ahmose records capturing oxen from the Fenkhw, a term here perhaps referring to the Phoenicians. In the annals of the greatest Egyptian conqueror, Thutmose III (reigned c. 1479–26 BCE), the coastal plain of Lebanon, called Djahy, is described as rich with fruit, wine, and grain. Of particular importance to the New Kingdom pharaohs was the timber, notably cedar, of the Lebanese forests. A temple relief at Karnak depicts the chiefs of Lebanon felling cedars for the Egyptian officers of Seti I (c. 1300 BCE).

Fuller information about the state of Phoenicia in the 14th century BCE comes from the Amarna letters, diplomatic texts belonging to the Egyptian foreign office, written in cuneiform and found at Tell el-Amarna in Middle Egypt. These archives reveal that the land of Retenu (Syria-Palestine) was divided into three administrative districts, each under an Egyptian governor. The northernmost district (Amurru) included the coastal region from Ugarit to Byblos, the central district (Upi) included the southern Al-Biqāʿ valley and Anti-Lebanon Mountains, and the third district (Canaan) included all of Palestine from the Egyptian border to Byblos. Also among the letters are many documents addressed by the subject princes of Phoenicia and their Egyptian governors to the pharaoh. It was a time of much political unrest. The Hittites from central Anatolia were invading Syria; nomads from the desert supported the invasion, and many of the local chiefs were ready to seize the opportunity to throw off the yoke of Egypt. The tablets that reveal this state of affairs are written in the language and script of Babylonia (i.e., Akkadian) and thus show the extent to which Babylonian culture had penetrated Palestine and Phoenicia; at the same time they illustrate the closeness of the relations between the Canaanite towns (i.e., those in Palestine) and the dominant power of Egypt.

After the reign of Akhenaton (Amenhotep IV; reigned 1353–36 BCE), that power collapsed altogether, but his successors attempted to recover it, and Ramses II (1279–13 BCE) reconquered Phoenicia as far as the Al-Kalb River. In the reign of Ramses III (1187–56 BCE), many great changes began to occur as a result of the invasion of Syria by peoples from Asia Minor and Europe. The successors of Ramses III lost their hold over Canaan; the 21st dynasty no longer intervened in the affairs of Syria. In The Story of Wen-Amon, a tale of an Egyptian religious functionary sent to Byblos to secure cedar about 1100 BCE, the episode of the functionary’s inhospitable reception shows the extent of the decline of Egypt’s authority in Phoenicia at this time. Sheshonk (Shishak) I, the founder of the 22nd dynasty, endeavoured about 928 BCE to assert the ancient supremacy of Egypt. His successes, however, were not lasting, and, as is clear from the Old Testament, the power of Egypt thereafter became ineffective.

Phoenicia as a colonial and commercial power

Kingship appears to have been the oldest form of Phoenician government. The royal houses claimed divine descent, and the king could not be chosen outside their members. His power, however, was limited by that of the merchant families, who wielded great influence in public affairs. Associated with the king was a council of elders; such at least was the case at Byblos, Sidon, and perhaps Tyre. During Nebuchadrezzar II’s reign (c. 605–c. 561 BCE), a republic took the place of the monarchy at Tyre, and the government was administered by a succession of suffetes (judges); they held office for short terms, and in one instance two ruled together for six years. Much later, in the 3rd century BCE, an inscription from Tyre also mentions a suffete. Carthage was governed by two suffetes, and these officers are frequently named in connection with the Carthaginian colonies. But this does not justify any inference that Phoenicia itself had such magistrates. Under the Persians a federal bond was formed linking Sidon, Tyre, and Aradus. Federation on a larger scale was never possible in Phoenicia because no sense of political unity existed to bind the different states together.

Colonies

By the 2nd millennium BCE the Phoenicians had already extended their influence along the coast of the Levant by a series of settlements, some well known, some virtually nothing but names. Well known throughout history are Joppa (Jaffa; later incorporated into Tel Aviv–Yafo, Israel) and Dor in the south. However, the earliest site known to possess important aspects of Phoenician culture outside the Phoenician homeland is Ugarit (Ra’s Shamrah), about 6 miles (10 km) north of Latakia. The site was already occupied before the 4th millennium BCE, but the Phoenicians became prominent there only in the Egyptian 12th dynasty (1938–1756 BCE).

Evidence remains of two temples dedicated to the Phoenician gods Baal and Dagon, although the ruling family appears to have been of different, non-Phoenician extraction. The 15th century BCE shows strong cultural influences already established there from Cyprus and the world of Mycenaean Greece. A splendid archive of literary and administrative documents found at Ugarit from this period provides evidence of an early form of alphabetic script, arguably the most important Phoenician contribution to Western civilization. In the latter part of the 13th century BCE, a flood of land and sea raiders (the Sea Peoples) descended on the Levant coast, destroying many of the Phoenician cities and rolling onward to the frontier of Egypt, from which they were beaten back by the pharaoh Ramses III. Ugarit was destroyed, together with Aradus and Byblos, though the latter were afterward rebuilt. Though Sidon was destroyed only in part, its inhabitants fled to Tyre, which from this time was regarded as the principal city of Phoenicia and began its period of prosperity and expansion.

Tyre’s first colony, Utica in North Africa, was founded perhaps as early as the 10th century BCE. It is likely that the expansion of the Phoenicians at the beginning of the 1st millennium BCE is to be connected with the alliance of Hiram of Tyre with Solomon of Israel in the second half of the 10th century BCE. In the following century, Phoenician presence in the north is shown by inscriptions at Samal (Zincirli Höyük) in eastern Cilicia and in the 8th century BCE at Karatepe in the Taurus Mountains, but there is no evidence of direct colonization. Both these cities acted as fortresses commanding the routes through the mountains to the mineral and other wealth of Anatolia.

Cyprus had Phoenician settlements by the 9th century BCE. Citium (biblical Kittim), known to the Greeks as Kition, in the southeast corner of the island, became the principal colony of the Phoenicians in Cyprus. Elsewhere in the Mediterranean, several smaller settlements were planted as stepping-stones along the route to Spain and its mineral wealth in silver and copper: early remains at Malta go back to the 7th century BCE and at Sulcis and Nora in Sardinia and Motya in Sicily perhaps a century earlier. According to Thucydides, the Phoenicians controlled a large part of the island but withdrew to the northwest corner under pressure from the Greeks. Modern scholars, however, disbelieve this and contend that the Phoenicians arrived only after the Greeks were established.

In North Africa the next site colonized after Utica was Carthage (near modern-day Tunis, Tun.). Carthage in turn seems to have established (or in some cases reestablished) a number of settlements in Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, the Balearic Islands, and southern Spain, eventually making this city the acknowledged leader of the western Phoenicians.

There is little factual evidence to confirm the presence of any settlement in Spain earlier than the 7th century BCE, or perhaps the 8th century, and many of these settlements should be viewed as Punic (Carthaginian) rather than Phoenician, though it is likely that the colonizing expeditions of the Carthaginians were supported by many emigrants from the Phoenician homeland. It is very probable that the tremendous colonial activity of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians was stimulated in the 8th–6th centuries BCE by the military blows that were wrecking the trade of the Phoenician homeland. Also, competition with the synchronous Greek colonization of the western Mediterranean cannot be ignored as a contributing factor.

In the 3rd century BCE Carthage, defeated by the Romans (in the First Punic War), embarked on a further imperialistic phase in Spain to recoup its losses. Rome responded, defeated Carthage a second time, and annexed Spain (Second Punic War). Finally, in 146 BCE, after a third war with Rome, Carthage suffered total destruction (Third Punic War). It was rebuilt as a Roman colony in 44 BCE. The ancient Phoenician language survived in use as a vernacular in some of the smaller cities of North Africa at least until the time of St. Augustine, bishop of Hippo (5th century CE).

Commerce

The mercantile role that tradition especially assigns to the Phoenicians was first developed on a considerable scale at the time of the Egyptian 18th dynasty. The position of Phoenicia, at a junction of both land and sea routes and under the protection of Egypt, favoured this development, and the discovery of the alphabet and its use and adaptation for commercial purposes assisted the rise of a mercantile society. A fresco in an Egyptian tomb of the 18th dynasty depicts seven Phoenician merchant ships that had just put in at an Egyptian port to sell their goods, including the distinctive Canaanite wine jars in which wine, a drink foreign to the Egyptians, was imported. The Story of Wen-Amon recounts the tale of a Phoenician merchant, Werket-el of Tanis in the Nile delta, who was described as the owner of 50 ships that sailed between Tanis and Sidon. The Sidonians are also famous in the poems of Homer as craftsmen, traders, pirates, and slave dealers. The biblical prophet Ezekiel, in a famous denunciation of the city of Tyre (Ezekiel 27–28), catalogs the vast extent of its commerce, covering most of the then-known world.

The exports of Phoenicia as a whole included particularly cedar and pine woods from Lebanon, fine linen from Tyre, Byblos, and Berytos, cloth dyed with the famous Tyrian purple (made from the snail Murex), embroideries from Sidon, metalwork and glass, glazed faience, wine, salt, and dried fish. The Phoenicians received in return raw materials such as papyrus, ivory, ebony, silk, amber, ostrich eggs, spices, incense, horses, gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, jewels, and precious stones.

In addition to these exports and imports, according to Herodotus’s History, the Phoenicians also conducted an important transit trade, especially in the manufactured goods of Egypt and Babylonia. From the lands of the Euphrates and Tigris, regular trade routes led to the Mediterranean. In Egypt the Phoenician merchants soon gained a foothold; they alone were able to maintain a profitable trade in the anarchic times of the 22nd and 23rd dynasties (c. 950–c. 730 BCE). Herodotus also observed that, though there were never any regular colonies of Phoenicians in Egypt, the Tyrians had a quarter of their own in Memphis and the Arabian caravan trade in perfume, spices, and incense passed through Phoenician hands on its way to Greece and the West.

The Phoenicians were not mere passive peddlers in art or commerce. Their achievement in history was a positive contribution, even if it was only that of an intermediary. For example, the extent of the debt of Greece alone to Phoenicia may be fully measured by its adoption, probably in the 8th century BCE, of the Phoenician alphabet with very little variation (along with Semitic loanwords), by characteristically Phoenician decorative motifs on pottery and by architectural paradigms, and by the universal use in Greece of the Phoenician standards of weights and measures.

Navigation and seafaring

Essential for the establishment of commercial supremacy was the Phoenician skill in navigation and seafaring. The Phoenicians are credited with the discovery and use of Polaris (the North Star). Fearless and patient navigators, they ventured into regions where no one else dared to go, and always, with an eye to their monopoly, they carefully guarded the secrets of their trade routes and discoveries and their knowledge of winds and currents. According to Herodotus, Pharaoh Necho II (reigned 610–595 BCE) organized the Phoenician circumnavigation of Africa (History, Book IV, chapter 42). Hanno, a Carthaginian, led another in the mid-5th century. The Carthaginians seem to have reached the island of Corvo in the Azores, and they may even have reached Britain, for many Carthaginian coins have been found there.

Assyrian and Babylonian domination of Phoenicia

Between the withdrawal of Egyptian rule in Syria and the western advance of Assyria, there was an interval during which the city-states of Phoenicia owned no suzerain. Byblos had kings of its own, among them Ahiram, Abi-baal, and Ethbaal (Ittobaʿal) in the 10th century, as excavations have shown. The history of this time period is mainly a history of Tyre, which not only rose to a hegemony among the Phoenician states but also founded colonies beyond the seas. Unfortunately, the native historical records of the Phoenicians have not survived, but it is clear from the Bible that the Phoenicians lived on friendly terms with the Israelites. In the 10th century BCE Hiram, king of Tyre, built the Temple of Solomon at Jerusalem in return for rich gifts of oil, wine, and territory. In the following century Ethbaal of Tyre married his daughter Jezebel to Ahab, king of Israel, and Jezebel’s daughter in turn married the king of Judah.

In the 9th century, however, the independence of Phoenicia was increasingly threatened by the advance of Assyria. In 868 BCE Ashurnasirpal II reached the Mediterranean and exacted tribute from the Phoenician cities. His son, Shalmaneser III, took tribute from the Tyrians and Sidonians and established a supremacy over Phoenicia (at any rate, in theory), which was acknowledged by occasional payments of tribute to him and his successors. In 734 BCE Tiglath-pileser III in his western campaign established his authority over Byblos, Arados, and Tyre. A fresh invasion by Shalmaneser V took place in 725 when he was on his way to Samaria, and in 701 Sennacherib, facing a rebellion of Philistia, Judah, and Phoenicia, drove out and deposed Luli, identified as king of both Sidon and Tyre. In 678 Sidon rebelled against the Assyrians, who marched down and annihilated the city, rebuilding it on the mainland. Sieges of Tyre took place in 672 and 668, but the city resisted both, only submitting in the later years of Ashurbanipal.

During the period of Neo-Babylonian power, which followed the fall of Nineveh in 612 BCE, the pharaohs made attempts to seize the Phoenician and Palestinian seaboard. Nebuchadrezzar II, king of Babylon, having sacked Jerusalem, marched against Phoenicia and besieged Tyre, but it held out successfully for 13 years, after which it capitulated, seemingly on favourable terms.

Persian period

Phoenicia passed from the suzerainty of the Babylonians to that of their conquerors, the Persian Achaemenian dynasty, in 538 BCE. Not surprisingly, the Phoenicians turned as loyal supporters to the Persians, who had overthrown their oppressors and reopened to them the trade of the East. Lebanon, Syria-Palestine, and Cyprus were organized as the fifth satrapy (province) of the Persian empire. At the time of Xerxes I’s invasion of Greece (480 BCE), Sidon was considered the principal city of Phoenicia; the ships of Sidon were considered the finest part of Xerxes’ fleet, and its king ranked next to Xerxes and before the king of Tyre. (Phoenician coins have been used to supplement historical sources on the period. From the reign of Darius I [522–486 BCE], the Persian monarchs had allowed their satraps and vassal states to coin silver and copper money. Arados, Byblos, Sidon, and Tyre therefore issued coinage of their own.) In the 4th century Tyre and later Sidon revolted against the Persian king. The revolt was suppressed in 345 BCE.

Greek and Roman periods

In 332 BCE Tyre resisted Alexander the Great in a siege of eight months. Alexander finally captured the city by driving a mole into the sea from the mainland to the island. As a result, Tyre, the inhabitants of which were largely sold into slavery, lost all importance, soon being replaced in the leadership of the regional markets by Alexandria, the conqueror’s newly founded city in Egypt. In the Hellenistic Age (323–30 BCE) the cities of Phoenicia became the prize for the competing Macedonian dynasties, controlled first by the Ptolemies of Egypt in the 3rd century BCE and then by the Seleucid dynasty of Syria in the 2nd century and early decades of the 1st century BCE. The Seleucids apparently permitted a good measure of autonomy to the Phoenician cities. Tigranes II (the Great) of Armenia brought an end to the Seleucid dynasty in 83 BCE and extended his realm to Mount Lebanon. The Romans eventually intervened to restore Seleucid sovereignty, but, when anarchy prevailed, they imposed peace and assumed direct rule in 64 BCE.

Phoenicia was incorporated into the Roman province of Syria, though Aradus, Sidon, and Tyre retained self-government. Berytus (Beirut), relatively obscure up to this point, rose to prominence by virtue of Augustus’s grant of Roman colonial status and by the lavish building program financed by Herod the Great (and in turn by his grandson and great-grandson). Under the Severan dynasty (CE 193–235) Sidon, Tyre, and probably Heliopolis (Baalbek) also received colonial status. Under this dynasty the province of Syria was partitioned into two parts: Syria Coele (“Hollow Syria”), comprising a large region loosely defined as north and east Syria, and Syria Phoenice in the southwestern region, which included not only coastal Phoenicia but also the territory beyond the mountains and into the Syrian Desert. Under the provincial reorganization of the Eastern Roman emperor Theodosius II in the early 5th century CE, Syria Phoenice was expanded into two provinces: Phoenice Prima (Maritima), basically ancient Phoenicia; and Phoenice Secunda (Libanesia), an area extending to Mount Lebanon on the west and deep into the Syrian Desert on the east. Phoenice Secunda included the cities of Emesa (its capital), Heliopolis, Damascus, and Palmyra.

During the period of the Roman Empire, the native Phoenician language died out in Lebanon and was replaced by Aramaic as the vernacular. Latin, the language of the soldiers and administrators, in turn fell before Greek, the language of letters of the eastern Mediterranean, by the 5th century CE. Lebanon produced a number of important writers in Greek, most notably Philo of Byblos (64–141) and, in the 3rd century, Porphyry of Tyre and Iamblichus of Chalcis in Syria Coele. Porphyry played a key role in disseminating the Neoplatonic philosophy of his master, Plotinus, which would influence both pagan and Christian thought in the later Roman Empire.

In many respects, the two most important cities of Lebanon during the time of the Roman Empire were Heliopolis and Berytus. At Heliopolis the Roman emperors, particularly the Severans, constructed a monumental temple complex, the most spectacular elements of which were the Temple of Jupiter Heliopolitanus and the Temple of Bacchus. Berytus, on the other hand, became the seat of the most famous provincial school of Roman law. The school, which probably was founded by Septimius Severus, lasted until the destruction of Berytus itself by a sequence of earthquakes, a tidal wave, and fire in the mid-6th century. Two of Rome’s most famous jurists, Papinian and Ulpian, both natives of Lebanon, taught as professors at the law school under the Severans. Their judicial opinions constitute well over one-third of the Pandects (Digest) contained in the great compilation of Roman law commissioned by the emperor Justinian I in the 6th century CE.

In 608–609 the Persian king Khosrow II pillaged Syria and Lebanon and reorganized the area into a new satrapy, excluding only Phoenicia Maritima. Between 622 and 629 the Byzantine emperor Heraclius mounted an offensive and restored Syria-Lebanon to his empire. This success was short-lived; in the 630s Muslim Arabs conquered Palestine and Lebanon, and the old Phoenician cities offered only token resistance to the invader.

Lebanon in the Middle Ages

The population of Lebanon did not begin to take its present form until the 7th century CE. At some time in the Byzantine period, a military group of uncertain origin, the Mardaïtes, established themselves in the north among the indigenous population. From the 7th century onward another group entered the country, the Maronites, a Christian community adhering to the monothelite doctrine. Forced by persecution to leave their homes in northern Syria, they settled in the northern part of the Lebanon Mountains and absorbed the Mardaïtes and indigenous peasants to form the present Maronite church. Originally Syriac-speaking, they gradually adopted the Arabic language while keeping Syriac for liturgical purposes. In south Lebanon, Arab tribesmen came in after the Muslim conquest of Syria in the 7th century and settled among the indigenous people. In the 11th century many were converted to the Druze faith, an esoteric offshoot of Shīʿite Islam. South Lebanon became the headquarters of the faith. Groups of Shīʿite Muslims settled on the northern and southern fringes of the mountains and in Al-Biqāʿ. In the coastal towns the population became mainly Sunni Muslim, but in town and country alike there remained considerable numbers of Christians of various sects. In the course of time, virtually all sections of the population adopted Arabic, the language of the Muslim states in which Lebanon was included.

Beirut and Mount Lebanon were ruled by the Umayyad dynasty (661–750) as part of the district of Damascus. Despite the occasional rising by the Maronites, Lebanon provided naval forces to the Umayyads in their interminable warfare with the Byzantines. The 8th-century Beirut legist al-Awzāʿī established a school of Islamic law that heavily influenced Lebanon and Syria. From the 9th to the 11th century, coastal Lebanon was usually under the sway of independent Egyptian Muslim dynasties, although the Byzantine Empire attempted to gain portions of the north.

At the end of the 11th century, Lebanon became a part of the Crusader states, the north being incorporated in the county of Tripoli, the south in the kingdom of Jerusalem. The Maronite church began to accept papal supremacy while keeping its own patriarch and liturgy.

Despite the strong fortresses of the Crusaders, a Muslim reconquest of Lebanon began, under the leadership of Egypt, with the fall of Beirut to the famous sultan Saladin in 1187. Mongol raids against Al-Biqāʿ valley were defeated. Lebanon became part of the Mamlūk state of Egypt and Syria in the 1280s and ’90s and was divided between several provinces. Mamlūk rule, which allowed limited local autonomy to regional leaders, encouraged commerce. The coastal cities, especially Tripoli, flourished, and the people of the interior were left largely free to manage their own affairs.

Ottoman period

Expansion of the Ottoman Empire began in the area under Selim I (reigned 1512–20). He defeated the Mamlūks in 1516–17 and added Lebanon (as part of Mamlūk Syria and Egypt) to his empire. Between the 16th and 18th centuries, Ottoman Lebanon evolved a social and political system of its own. Ottoman Aleppo or Tripoli governed the north, Damascus the centre, and Sidon (after 1660) the south. Coastal Lebanon and Al-Biqāʿ valley were usually ruled more directly from Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul, Tur.), the Ottoman capital, while Mount Lebanon enjoyed semiautonomous status. The population took up its present position: the Shīʿites were driven out of the north but increased their strength in the south; many Druze moved from south Lebanon to Jebel Druze (Jabal al-Durūz) in southern Syria; Maronite peasants, increasing in numbers, moved south into districts mainly populated by Druze. Monasteries acquired more land and wealth. In all parts of the mountains there grew up families of notables who controlled the land and established a feudal relation with the cultivators; some were Christian, some Druze, who were politically dominant. From them arose the house of Maʿn, which established a princedom over the whole of Mount Lebanon and was accepted by Christians and Druze alike. Fakhr al-Dīn II ruled most of Lebanon from 1593 to 1633 and encouraged commerce. When the house of Maʿn died out in 1697, the notables elected as prince a member of the Shihāb family, who were Sunni Muslims but with Druze followers, and this family ruled until 1842. Throughout this period European influence was growing. European trading colonies were established in Saïda and other coastal towns, mainly to trade in silk, the major Lebanese export from the 17th to the 20th century. French political influence was great, particularly among the Maronites, who formally united with the Roman Catholic Church in 1736.

The 19th century was marked by economic growth, social change, and political crisis. The growing Christian population moved southward and into the towns, and toward the end of the century many of these Christians emigrated to North America, South America, and Egypt. French Catholic and American Protestant mission schools, as well as schools of the local communities, multiplied; in 1866 the American mission established the Syrian Protestant College (now the American University of Beirut), and in 1875 the Jesuits started the Université Saint-Joseph. Such schools produced a literate class, particularly among the Christians, that found employment as professionals. Beirut became a great international port, and its merchant houses established connections with Egypt, the Mediterranean countries, and England.

The growth of the Christian communities upset the traditional balance of Lebanon. The Shihāb princes inclined more and more toward them, and part of the family indeed became Maronites. The greatest of them, Bashīr II (reigned 1788–1840), after establishing his power with the help of Druze notables, tried to weaken them. When the Egyptian troops of Ibrāhīm Pasha occupied Lebanon and Syria in 1831, Bashīr formed an alliance with him to limit the power of the ruling families and to preserve his own power. But Egyptian rule was ended by Anglo-Ottoman intervention, aided by a popular rising in 1840, and Bashīr was deposed. With him the princedom virtually ended; his weak successor was deposed by the Ottomans in 1842, and from that time relations grew worse between the Maronites, led by their patriarch, and the Druze, trying to retain their traditional supremacy. The French supported the Maronites and the British supported a section of the Druze, while the Ottoman government encouraged the collapse of the traditional structure, which would enable it to impose its own direct authority. The conflict culminated in the massacre of Maronites by the Druze in 1860. The complacent attitude of the Ottoman authorities led to direct French intervention on behalf of the Christians. The powers jointly imposed the Organic Regulation of 1861 (modified in 1864), which gave Mount Lebanon, the axial mountain region, autonomy under a Christian governor appointed by the Ottoman sultan, assisted by a council representing the various communities. Mount Lebanon prospered under this regime until World War I (1914–18), when the Ottoman government placed it under strict control, similar to that already established for the coast and Al-Biqāʿ valley.

French mandate

At the end of the war, Lebanon was occupied by Allied forces and placed under a French military administration. In 1920 Beirut and other coastal towns, Al-Biqāʿ, and certain other districts were added to the autonomous territory Mount Lebanon as defined in 1861 to form Greater Lebanon (Grand Liban; subsequently called the Lebanese Republic). In 1923 the League of Nations formally gave the mandate for Lebanon and Syria to France. The Maronites, strongly pro-French by tradition, welcomed this, and during the next 20 years, while France held the mandate, the Maronites were favoured. The expansion of prewar Lebanon into Greater Lebanon, however, changed the balance of the population. Although the Maronites were the largest single element, they no longer formed a majority. The population was more or less equally divided between Christians and Muslims, and a large section of it wanted neither to be ruled by France nor to be part of an independent Lebanon but rather to form part of a larger Syrian or Arab state. To ease tensions between the communities, the constitution of 1926 provided that each should be equitably represented in public offices. Thus, by convention the president of the republic was normally a Maronite, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim, and the speaker of the chamber a Shīʿite Muslim.

Under French administration, public utilities and communications were improved, and education was expanded (although higher education was left almost wholly in the hands of religious bodies). Beirut prospered as a centre of trade with surrounding countries, but agriculture was depressed by the decline of the silk industry and the worldwide economic depression. As the middle class of Beirut grew and a real, if fragile, sense of common national interest sprang up alongside communal loyalties, there also grew the desire for more independence. A Franco-Lebanese treaty of independence and friendship was signed in 1936 but was not ratified by the French government. Lebanon was controlled by the Vichy authorities after the fall of France in 1940 but was occupied by British and Free French troops in 1941. The Free French representative proclaimed the independence of Lebanon and Syria, which was underwritten by the British government. Because of their own precarious position, however, the Free French were unwilling to relax control. In 1943, however, they held elections, which resulted in victory for the Nationalists. Their leader, Bishara al-Khuri, was elected president. The new government passed legislation introducing certain constitutional changes that eliminated all traces of French influence, to which the French objected. On Nov. 11, 1943, the president and almost the entire government were arrested by the French. This led to an insurrection, followed by British diplomatic intervention; the French restored the government and transferred powers to it. Although independence had been proclaimed on Nov. 22, 1943, it was not until after another crisis in 1945 that an agreement was reached on a simultaneous withdrawal of British and French troops. This was completed by the end of 1946, and Lebanon became wholly independent; it had already become a member of the United Nations and the Arab League.

Lebanon after independence

For many years Lebanon maintained its parliamentary democracy, despite serious trials. The main problem for Lebanon was to implement the unwritten power-sharing National Pact of 1943 between the Christians and Muslims. In the early years of independence, so long as no urgent call for pan-Arab unity came from outside, the National Pact faced no serious strains.

Khuri regime, 1943–52

Khuri, the Maronite president, closely cooperated with the Sunni leader Riad al-Sulh, who was premier most of the time. A temporary amendment of the constitution permitted the president, in 1949, a second six-year term. The parliamentary elections of 1947 were manipulated to produce a parliament favourable to the amendment. This, together with the open favouritism of the president toward his friends and the gross corruption he allegedly condoned, made Khuri increasingly unpopular after his reelection in 1949.

The military coup that overthrew the regime of Shukri al-Kuwatli in Syria in March 1949 encouraged the opponents of Khuri in Lebanon. In July 1949 the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (or the Parti Populair Syrien; PPS) tried to overthrow the regime by force. The coup failed, and its leaders were seized and shot. The PPS took its revenge by securing the assassination of Khuri’s premier in 1951. The mounting opposition to the Khuri regime culminated in September 1952 in a general strike that forced his resignation. Camille Chamoun was elected by the parliament to succeed him.

Chamoun regime and the 1958 crisis

The presidency of Chamoun coincided with the rise of Arab nationalist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt. During the Suez War (October–December 1956), Chamoun earned Nasser’s enmity by refusing to break off diplomatic relations with Britain and France, which had joined Israel in attacking Egypt. Chamoun was accused of seeking to align Lebanon with the Western-sponsored Central Treaty Organization, also known as the Baghdad Pact. (See Suez Crisis.)

Matters came to a head following the parliamentary elections of 1957, which allegedly were manipulated to produce a parliament favourable to the reelection of Chamoun. When Syria entered into a union with Egypt—the United Arab Republic—in February 1958, the Muslim opposition to Chamoun in Lebanon hailed the union as a triumph for Pan-Arabism, and there were widespread demands that Lebanon be associated in the union. In May a general strike was proclaimed, and the Muslims of Tripoli rose in armed insurrection. The insurrection spread, and the army was asked to take action against the insurgents. The commanding general, Fuad Chehab, refused to attack them for fear that the army, which was composed of Christians and Muslims, would split apart. The Chamoun government took the issue of external intervention to the United Nations (UN), accusing the United Arab Republic of intervention, and UN observers were sent to Lebanon. When in July the pro-Western regime in Iraq was toppled in a coup, President Chamoun immediately requested U.S. military intervention, and on the following day U.S. Marines landed outside Beirut. The presence of U.S. troops had little immediate effect on the internal situation, but the insurrection slowly faded out. Parliament turned to the commander of the army, General Chehab, as a compromise candidate to succeed Chamoun as his term ended; Rashid Karami became the new premier.

Chehabism: from Chehab to Hélou, 1958–76

The crisis had been resolved by compromise, and the Chehab regime was successful in maintaining the compromise and promoting the national unity of the Lebanese people. By his refusal as army commander to take offensive action against the insurgents in 1958, Chehab had earned the confidence of the Muslims. Once in power, he proceeded to allay long-standing Muslim grievances by associating Muslims more closely in the administration and by attending to neglected areas of Lebanon where Muslims predominated. Internal stability was further promoted by the maintenance of good relations with the United Arab Republic, which, even after the Syrian secession in 1961, remained highly popular with the Muslim Lebanese. The economic boom that had begun under the Chamoun regime as the result of the flight of capital from the unstable Arab world into Lebanon continued under the Chehab regime.

After stabilizing confessional relations, Chehab embarked upon a program of reform intended to strengthen the Lebanese state, the capabilities of which up until that time had been enormously weak. His main goal was to reduce some of the social and economic imbalances that had begun to emerge in Lebanese society and which were reflected in the political system by the dominance of the zuʿamāʾ (old semifeudal elites). Personnel reform legislation passed in 1959 called for an equality of appointments for Christians and Muslims to bureaucratic posts. His efforts to expand the state’s role in the provision of social services were regarded by the traditional elites with suspicion, as this development competed with their own patronage networks. Through the establishment of state-run agencies such as the Litani River Authority aimed at improving the socioeconomic status of the relatively underserved (and largely Shīʿite) south of the country, Chehab also tried to enhance the role of the Lebanese state in development activities.

Charles Hélou, a former journalist and member of Khuri’s Constitutional Bloc, was elected to succeed Chehab in 1964. Hélou’s presidency, essentially a similar—if weaker—version of the Chehab administration, coincided with a period of great change in Lebanon that would lead to the outbreak of civil war in 1975. Combined with the country’s oil boom, Chehab-era reforms set off a wave of tremendous socioeconomic change in Lebanon that led to dramatic increases in social mobility and urbanization, especially in Beirut. Like the country, however, the city failed to achieve a balanced integration of its various groups. Beirut became a reflection of Lebanon as a whole as each quarter took on a religious affiliation, and newcomers suffered from deep and growing social and economic contrasts with their more affluent neighbours. Freed from the control of their rural patrons and unintegrated into the urban social and political fabric, these migrants, relatively underprivileged compared with the wealthier urban classes of Beirut, soon emerged as a tremendous source of potential instability. By the mid-1970s a multitiered “poverty belt”—a ring of impoverished settlements largely populated by poorer rural migrants—had sprung up to encircle the city.

Social and political polarization in Lebanon was further increased by the movement of Palestinian guerrillas into Lebanon, particularly after the Jordanian campaign against the Palestinian militias and subsequent expulsion of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from Jordan in the early 1970s. After being forced from bases in Jordan, the Palestinians thought of Lebanon as their last refuge, and by 1973 roughly one-tenth of the population in Lebanon was Palestinian. Landless, mostly poor, and without political status, the Palestinians in Lebanon contributed to the polarization of Lebanese politics as they found common cause with those Lebanese who were poor, rural, and mainly Muslim. As socioeconomic alienation increasingly began to intersect with confessional grievances, and as the Palestinian presence in Lebanon began to essentially acquire the status of a “state within a state,” Lebanon’s delicate political balance began to unravel.

Civil war

The experiment in state building started by Chehab and continued by Hélou came to an end with the election of Suleiman Franjieh to the presidency in August 1970. Franjieh, a traditional Maronite clan leader from the Zghartā region of northern Lebanon, proved unable to shield the state from the conflicting forces lining up against it. The dramatic increase in social and political mobilization sparked by the growing presence of Palestinian guerrillas led to the emergence of various new social and political movements, including Mūsā al-Ṣadr’s Ḥarakat al-Maḥrūmīn (“Movement of the Deprived”), and to the rise of numerous sectarian-based militias. Unable to maintain a monopoly of force, the Lebanese state apparatus was powerless to stop the increase in violence that was gradually destroying the country’s fragile social and political fabric. On the eve of the civil war in the mid-1970s, the escalating violence had deepened the fault line between the Maronite Christian and Muslim communities, symbolized in turn by the increasing power of the Christian Phalangists, led by Pierre Gemayel (see Gemayel family), and the predominantly Muslim Lebanese National Movement (LNM), led by Kamal Jumblatt.

On April 13, 1975, the Phalangists attacked a bus of Palestinians en route to a refugee camp at Tall al-Zaʿtar, an attack that escalated into a more general battle between the Phalangists and the LNM. In the months that followed, the general destruction of the central market area of Beirut was marked by the emergence of a “green line” between Muslim West Beirut and Christian East Beirut, which persisted until the end of the civil war in 1990, with each side under the control of its respective militias. Lebanon witnessed the disintegration of many of its administrative apparatuses, including the army, which splintered into its various sectarian components.

In the midst of this violence, Elias Sarkis was elected president in May 1976. With the Christians on the defensive against the forces affiliated with the LNM, there appeared to be some opening for negotiations to patch up the fractured communal consensus. Sarkis’s mediation efforts, however, were thwarted by two principal factors that continued to plague negotiation efforts throughout the civil war: the increasing interference of external actors in the Lebanese conflict and the emergence of power struggles within the various sectarian communities that ultimately militated against stable negotiations.

The first major intervention by an external actor in the Lebanese civil war was carried out by Syria. Despite its earlier support for the PLO, Syria feared that an LNM-PLO victory would provoke Israeli intervention against the Palestinians and lead Syria into a confrontation with Israel, thereby complicating Syria’s own interests. As a result, in June 1976 it launched a large-scale intervention to redress the emerging imbalance of power in favour of the Christians. Syria’s intervention sparked a more active Israeli involvement in Lebanese affairs, in which Israel also intervened on behalf of the Christians, whom Israelis looked upon as their main ally in their fight against the PLO. Thus, Israel provided arms and finances to the Christians in the south of the country while the Palestinian forces (who by 1977 again enjoyed Syrian support) continued to conduct cross-border raids into Israel. In March 1978 Israel launched a major reprisal attack, sending troops into the south of Lebanon as far as the Līṭānī River. The resulting conflict led to the establishment of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL)—a peacekeeping force meant to secure Israeli withdrawal and support the return of Lebanese authority in the south—as well as to the creation of the South Lebanese Army (SLA)—a militia led by Saʿd Haddad and armed and financed by Israel to function as a proxy militia under Lebanese Christian command.

The most significant Israeli intervention during the course of the Lebanese civil war, however, was the invasion that began on June 6, 1982. Although the stated goal of Israel was only to secure the territory north of its border with Lebanon so as to stop PLO raids, Israeli forces quickly progressed as far as Beirut’s suburbs and laid siege to the capital, particularly to West Beirut. The invasion resulted in the eventual removal of PLO militia from Lebanon under the supervision of a multinational peacekeeping force, the transfer of the PLO headquarters to Tunis, Tun., and the temporary withdrawal of Syrian forces back to Al-Biqāʿ. Galvanized by the Israeli invasion, a number of Shīʿite groups subsequently emerged, including Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia that led an insurgency campaign against Israeli troops.

In August 1982 Pierre Gemayel’s son Bashir, the young Phalangist leader who had managed to unify the Maronite militias into the Lebanese Forces (LF), was elected to the presidency. In mid-September, however, three weeks after his election, Gemayel was assassinated in a bombing at the Phalangist headquarters. Two days later, Christian militiamen under the command of Elie Hobeika, permitted entry to the area by Israeli forces, retaliated by killing hundreds (estimates range from several hundreds to several thousands) of people in the Palestinian refugee camps of Ṣabrā and Shātīlā. The election of Bashir’s brother, Amin Gemayel, to the presidency in late September 1982 failed to temper the mounting violence as battles between the Christians and the Druze broke out in the traditionally Druze territory of the Shūf Mountains, resulting in numerous Christian fatalities. The Western peacekeeping forces that had been dispatched to Lebanon in 1982 likewise suffered heavy casualties, among them the destruction of the U.S. embassy by a car bomb in April 1983 and the suicide attacks on the U.S. and French troops of the multinational force stationed in Lebanon in October 1983, which hastened their withdrawal from Lebanon early the following year (see 1983 Beirut barracks bombings). By mid-1985 most of the Israeli troops had also withdrawn, leaving the proxy SLA in control of a buffer zone north of the international border in their wake.

Exacerbated by various foreign interventions, the Lebanese civil war descended into a complicated synthesis of inter- and intracommunal conflict characterized by the increasing fragmentation of the militias associated with each of the sectarian communities. The Phalangist-dominated LF fractured into various contending parties that were in turn challenged by the militias of the Franjieh and Chamoun families in the north and south of the country, respectively. Meanwhile, the Sunni community’s militias were challenged by militias organized by Islamic fundamentalist groups, and the Shīʿite community experienced fierce divisions between the more clerical Hezbollah in the south and the more secular Amal (“Hope,” also an acronym for Afwāj al-Muqāwamah al-Lubnāniyyah [Lebanese Resistance Detachments]) movement led by Nabbih Berri. The Palestinians in turn endured serious infighting between Fatah factions of the PLO that had begun to return to the country following the Israeli withdrawal.

Fueled by continuing foreign patronage, Lebanon between 1985 and 1989 descended into a “war society” as the various militias became increasingly involved in smuggling, extortion, and the arms and drug trades and began to lose their populist legitimacy. This period of disintegration was crystallized with the decline of many of the country’s remaining institutions, and in 1987 the collapse of the Lebanese pound—which had demonstrated a surprising resiliency throughout the first 10 years of the war—led to a period of profound economic hardship and inflation. Furthermore, when Gemayel’s term ended on Sept. 22, 1988, parliament could not agree on the selection of a new president; as a result, Gemayel named Gen. Michel Aoun, a Maronite and the head of what was left of the Lebanese Army, as acting prime minister moments before his own term expired, despite the continuing claim to that office by the incumbent, Salim al-Hoss. Lebanon thus had no president but two prime ministers, and two separate governments emerged in competition for legitimacy. In late November 1988, General Aoun was dismissed as commander in chief of the armed forces; because of the continued loyalty of large portions of the military, however, Aoun was able to retain a de facto leadership. In February 1989 Aoun launched an offensive against the rival LF, and in March he declared a “war of liberation” in an attempt to expel the Syrian influence. In September 1989, following months of intense violence, Aoun accepted a cease-fire brokered by a tripartite committee made up of the leaders of Algeria, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia.

On Oct. 22, 1989, most members of the Lebanese parliament (last elected in 1972) met in Ṭāʾif, Saudi Arabia, and accepted a constitutional reform package that restored consociational government in Lebanon in modified form. The power of the traditionally Maronite president was reduced in relation to those of the Sunni prime minister and the Shīʿite speaker of the National Assembly, and the division of parliamentary seats, cabinet posts, and senior administrative positions was adjusted to represent an equal ratio of Christian and Muslim officials. A commitment was made for the gradual elimination of confessionalism, and Lebanese independence was affirmed with a call for an end to foreign occupation in the south. The terms of the agreement also stipulated that Syrian forces were to remain in Lebanon for a period of up to two years, during which time they would assist the new government in establishing security arrangements. For his part, General Aoun was greatly opposed to the Ṭāʾif Accord, fearing it would provide a recipe for continued Syrian involvement in Lebanon.

Parliament subsequently convened on Nov. 5, 1989, in Lebanon, where it ratified the Ṭāʾif Accord and elected René Moawad to the presidency. Moawad was assassinated on November 22, and Elias Hrawi was elected two days later; however, General Aoun denounced both presidential elections as invalid. Several days later it was announced that General Aoun had again been dismissed from his position as head of the armed forces, and Gen. Émile Lahoud was named in his place.

In January 1990 intense strife broke out in East Beirut between Aoun and Samir Geagea, who then headed the LF, which proved very costly for the Maronite community and, over several months, resulted in the deaths of numerous (mostly Christian) Lebanese. The final vestiges of the Lebanese civil war were at last extinguished on Oct. 13, 1990, when Syrian troops launched a ground and air attack against Aoun and forced him into exile.

The newly unified government of President Hrawi then embarked upon the delicate and dangerous process of consolidating and extending the power of the Lebanese government. A new cabinet composed of many former militia leaders was appointed, and considerable effort was devoted to the demobilization of most of the wartime militias. The process of rebuilding the Lebanese army was begun under the auspices of General Lahoud, its new commander in chief. At tremendous cost, the more-than-15-year Lebanese civil war was ended, and the framework for Lebanon’s Second Republic had been established. Throughout the war’s duration, more than 100,000 people had been killed, nearly 1,000,000 displaced, and several billion dollars’ worth of damage to property and infrastructure sustained.

Lebanon’s Second Republic (1990– )

Politics and reconstruction in post-civil war Lebanon

The destruction wrought by the country’s massive civil war necessitated a sweeping program of reconstruction, which was largely undertaken by Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri following his appointment to the post after the 1992 parliamentary elections. Hariri’s reconstruction plan, designed to revive the economy and reestablish Lebanon as a financial and commercial centre in the region, achieved the initial stabilization of the value of the Lebanese pound and succeeded in raising significant foreign capital on European bond markets, albeit at high rates of return.

The immediate challenges of Lebanon’s post-civil war period were to institutionalize the political reforms agreed to at Ṭāʾif and to reconstruct the country’s social and economic infrastructure. Lebanon achieved important political successes with the transition of the presidency in 1998 from Hrawi to Lahoud, paralleled by the transition from Hariri’s government to that of Salim al-Hoss that same year, and with the increasing legitimacy of the National Assembly in the Lebanese political process. The gradual reintegration of previously marginalized groups, facilitated by acceptance of the Ṭāʾif reforms, meant an increased role for both the Maronite Christians (who had initially boycotted the electoral process) and Hezbollah, which became politically active in postwar Lebanon.

The development of the Second Republic remained closely linked to its larger external environment—in particular, to Israel and Syria, the two principal players in Lebanon. Israel continued to exercise influence in its self-declared security zone in southern Lebanon, where it waged an ongoing war of attrition with Hezbollah’s militia forces throughout the 1990s. However, in light of the increasingly costly war, Israeli support for a unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon had gathered significant momentum by the end of the decade, and Israeli troops were withdrawn in 2000. Hostility between Israel and Hezbollah, marked by periodic clashes and retaliatory exchanges of violence, continued into the early years of the 21st century. Tensions flared in July 2006, when Hezbollah launched an armed operation against Israel from southern Lebanon, killing a number of Israeli soldiers and abducting two as prisoners of war. This led Israel to launch a major military offensive against Hezbollah. The 34-day war between Hezbollah and Israel, in which more than 1,100 Lebanese and about 160 Israelis were killed and some 1,000,000 Lebanese were displaced, caused fresh damage to key services and infrastructure in southern Lebanon.

Meanwhile, following the agreement reached at Ṭāʾif, Syria also continued to exercise an extensive influence in Lebanon. Socioeconomic ties between Syria and Lebanon were facilitated by a series of bilateral treaties and agreements concluded between the two governments, the scope of which ranged from economic and trade ties to cultural and educational exchanges. On May 22, 1991, a treaty of “fraternity, coordination, and cooperation,” interpreted by some as a legitimation of Syria’s continued presence in Lebanon, was signed with Syria, and a defense and security pact followed. In addition, despite stipulations in the Ṭāʾif Accord that called for a withdrawal of Syrian troops to Al-Biqāʿ by the end of 1992, Syria maintained a contingent of some 30,000 troops in Lebanon in the 1990s. With the Israeli withdrawal from the south of the country in 2000, however, calls for Syrian disengagement increased. Over the next several years, Syrian troops undertook a series of phased withdrawals and redeployments, gradually restructuring the number and distribution of Syria’s armed forces in Lebanon. Overall troop strength for the Syrian army in Lebanon was reduced to about 14,000, but it was not until the assassination of Hariri in early 2005 that real domestic pressure for a full Syrian withdrawal began to grow. It was widely suspected that Hariri, who was then out of office, was killed at the behest of the Syrian government. The result was that hundreds of thousands of Lebanese—both against and for the Syrian presence—poured into the streets in a series of spontaneous mass protests. The last Syrian troops left Lebanon by mid-2005, and in late 2008 Syria and Lebanon established formal diplomatic ties for the first time.

While the Ṭāʾif Accord had called for a gradual end to confessionalism within the country, the reality in post-civil war Lebanon tended toward an entrenchment and strengthening of sectarian allegiances. The civil war resulted in the virtual elimination of multiconfessional regions where coexistence was the norm; as a result, sectarianism became increasingly geographically as well as culturally defined. Moreover, the electoral system continued to militate against the emergence of crosscutting political parties with the ability to challenge the regional power bases of Lebanon’s traditional zuʿamāʾ. Despite the increased dynamism of the Lebanese parliament, real political power in Lebanon’s Second Republic lay with the troika of sectarian leaders that occupied the offices of president, prime minister, and the speaker of the Assembly. Following the disarmament of the various militias of the civil war era, communal conflict was largely transplanted into the political arena, as political decisions largely became a result of elite confessional bargaining rather than an outcome of democratic process; political divisions were further deepened by the fracture of the political process following the assassination of Hariri and the withdrawal of Syria from the country in 2005.

As the end of President Lahoud’s nine-year period in office approached in late 2007, the Lebanese political process faced a stalemate; the National Assembly’s attempt to select a successor was suspended in deadlock by a boycott led by the pro-Syrian opposition, which sought a greater share of political power and prevented the Assembly from achieving the necessary two-thirds quorum. As a result, Lahoud’s term expired in November 2007 with no successor named. The post remained unoccupied as the opposing factions struggled to reach a consensus on a candidate and on the makeup of the new government.

As the political crisis drew on, clashes between Hezbollah forces and government supporters—sparked by government decisions that included plans to shut down Hezbollah’s private telecommunications network—erupted in Beirut in May 2008. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah equated these moves with a declaration of war and mobilized Hezbollah forces, which swiftly took control of parts of the city. In the following days the government reversed the decisions that had sparked the outbreak of violence, and a summit attended by both factions in Qatar led to an agreement granting the Hezbollah-led opposition the veto power it had long sought.

On May 25, 2008, Gen. Michel Suleiman was elected president, ending months of political impasse. He reappointed Fuad Siniora, who had been prime minister since mid-2005, at the head of a new unity government soon thereafter, and, after several weeks of negotiation, the makeup of the new government was agreed upon. Reconciliation efforts continued, and in October 2008 a new election law that restructured voting districts was passed. That same month Lebanon and Syria established diplomatic relations for the first time in both countries’ independent histories.

Although Lebanon experienced relative stability following the Qatar-mediated agreement, tensions escalated with the approach of parliamentary elections scheduled for June 2009. Voter turnout in the election reached its highest point since the civil war period, and the pro-Western March 14 bloc—named for the date in 2005 on which thousands gathered to protest Syrian military presence in Lebanon—emerged from the contest having maintained its majority. Voting was considered generally free and fair, although international observers expressed concern at some tactics, including vote buying, that took place in the preelection period.

Shortly after the March 14 bloc’s electoral victory, its leader—Saad al-Hariri, the son of former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri—was named prime minister and was charged by President Suleiman with the complex task of forming a unity government. Weeks of negotiations with the opposition proved fruitless, however, and after more than two months Hariri announced that he would abandon attempts to form the government and would step down as prime minister-designate. The following week, however, President Suleiman once more designated Hariri prime minister and asked that he try again to form the government. Hariri continued his efforts, and in early November 2009, following months of negotiations, he announced that a unity government had been successfully formed. The cabinet included 15 seats allotted to Hariri’s majority, 10 seats for Hezbollah, and 5 seats for candidates nominated by President Suleiman.

The functioning of the unity government was impeded by political tension regarding the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon, charged with investigating the assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri. In 2010, when it became apparent that members of Hezbollah were likely to be indicted in connection with the assassination, Hezbollah and its allies demanded that Lebanon reject the tribunal, leading which led to a standoff with Saad al-Hariri and his supporters. In January 2011, after Syria and Saudi Arabia failed to broker an agreement to reduce tension, a group of 11 ministers from Hezbollah and allied parties resigned from the cabinet, causing the unity government to collapse.

At the end of January 2011, Najib Mikati, a Sunni billionaire, became the new prime minister, having secured the support of a parliamentary majority made up of Hezbollah and its allies. Mikati’s appointment was opposed by Saad al-Hariri, who vowed not to participate in any government led by Hezbollah. Hariri’s supporters took to the streets in Lebanon, rioting and claiming that the collapse of the Hariri government and Mikati’s appointment as prime minister were the result of Syrian and Iranian intervention to establish Hezbollah as the dominant political faction in Lebanon.